Graveyard of the Hesperides

by Lindsey Davis

  The grandfather carried on until his death. I had heard Tiberius speak passionately of marble, and I now understood that; as a lad he had loved to visit building sites with his grandpa, who had been delighted that his only grandson took so much interest. Tiberius observed and absorbed every kind of knowledge.

  His parents’ marriage had been a love match; their families became acquainted because one of his grandfathers supplied warehouse storage for the other’s costly marble. So, when Tiberius was orphaned, it seemed natural for his maternal uncle, Tullius, by then in charge of the warehouse empire, to take him in. One day Tiberius would inherit everything. That had never encouraged the suspicious Tullius to involve him closely. So now there was friction and argument, occasioned by Tiberius branching out, back into the business on his father’s side. I wondered whether Uncle Tullius regarded warehouse management as a clean-hands occupation, while perhaps he looked down on building.

  He would loathe seeing his nephew at this moment, covered with dust, organizing trenches, unearthing gruesome finds, wielding a hefty pick as if he had always done so. Uncle Tullius and I had clashed already, so I knew he would resent seeing me here too, itemizing finds, plotting them on a map I had drawn of the courtyard, in a team with his rebellious nephew. For Tiberius, this new life fulfilled the wish of someone he had specially loved, and I could see that mattered to him deeply. He also cared that I played such a willing part in it.

  That was why the Garden of the Hesperides would be an important experience for us. It was an ordinary bar. Even the fate of its missing waitress was mundane, common enough for a woman in that world. However, with this project Manlius Faustus had begun rebuilding lost family connections. It made him happy. I was happy for his sake and even began to accept the wedding ceremony he wanted; it would publicly mark this turning point in his life.

  Of course I might still niggle him about the wedding. But, whether in Roman peristyle or British round hut, niggling was what a wife did. A good husband shrugged off, or maybe even enjoyed, the tussle.

  It made me think more keenly about Rufia. Had she cut up rough in some domestic argument that nobody shrugged off? Whereas I had independent free speech with a tolerant man, had she been cruelly battered to death for her outspokenness?

  *

  We had brought back the basket of original finds from the Aventine. Waiting members of the vigiles took out Rufia’s bones, which they passed around with their usual terrible, out-of-place jokes, although those were superseded by sucked teeth and heavy silence as the workmen made grisly new finds. The troops always used graveyard humor to make tragedy endurable, yet they had a basic respect for the untimely dead. They were slapdash, untrained, unsystematic hard men, but it was not entirely their fault; they were, too, undermanned, poorly supervised, despised by the public and shoved into all kinds of danger on a daily basis, generally without thanks. Someone had to investigate. Under the shabby bravado, they did want a proper resolution. Their methods might be crude but, according to their practice, they would see it through.

  Our men soon produced plenty to cause deploring head shakes.

  Right at the center of the courtyard we found a single burial that seemed very old, just a cluster of fragmented bones, together with a crude pot and several unmatched colored stone beads. Faustus decreed this burial was unconnected to the rest, rather some ancient interment whose history we could never learn. Morellus and Macer, the chief investigator of the Third, exchanged mutters in a huddle, then agreed. But the next finds were different.

  Around the edge of the yard were a set of surprisingly neat burials. They appeared to be all of one date. The bodies were laid out straight. Nothing was found with them. “Stripped,” said Morellus laconically. “Every stitch removed. No wrappings. No grave goods to help them down in Hades.”

  “Not even a coin to pay the ferryman over the Styx,” added Macer. He was a wiry tyke with bandy legs and a dismal attitude. “That will upset the thieving guild of river boatmen!”

  Morellus decreed, “I think we can assume these poor sods were not planted in the earth by loving sons, pious wives or freed slaves honoring their kind old masters.”

  “They all are nicely set, no bent legs, hands in their laps, no heads off,” Macer commented. “Me, I do like to see a bit of care in an unlawful burial.”

  “So we’re looking for a surveyor?” joked Morellus, bending low to peer at the nearest skeleton while eyeing it up as if using a straight edge.

  “Oh just a landlord who wanted to remember where he must not let his gardener plant lavender.”

  “You have a sweet imagination, brother!”

  “Herbs in a bar garden, always welcome! Brings the bees. A bee might sting your girlfriend, so you get to go down her tunic and soothe the pain for her.” They glanced at Tiberius and me.

  Ignoring their lewd asides, I decided to impose professionalism. “I count five now, plus the one we think is Rufia. Her grave was badly disturbed before anyone realized what it was, so her bones are a bit jumbled. But the odd leg we dug up yesterday seems to have come off number four. Can’t tell whose was the dog Morellus identified, nor who took a chicken supper to Hades with him.”

  “Bright bint, your scribe,” Macer said to Tiberius.

  “Future wife. We’re promised.” Leaning on his pick, Tiberius rested. “I’d have given her an iron betrothal ring, but she asked for a laundry slave instead.” This was not true. “Had the party and everything.” Well, we went to dinner at my parents’ house. “Got drunk with her father, faithfully promised her mother I’ll look after her—or were those the other way around?… Yes, she’s bright. She’ll help me solve this for you, if you don’t have the capacity.”

  “Old crime. Landlord did it. He’s dead. No point,” Macer replied. That was frank. It was also as I expected.

  “It would be good to work out who they are,” I suggested. “The barmaid will have no advocate, but the rest may be persons of status, who should be identified if possible.”

  “Nice little row of other barmaids,” Macer disagreed. “Pitiful. Old Thales must have bumped one off every week. His weekly treat on market day: bash another one.”

  Morellus stirred unhappily. “No, number four is a man. Others could be.” I wondered whether he would have raised this objection had he not given his verdict on the male to Tiberius and me that morning. Would he have kept quiet and let Macer close the case? Put it all down to a perverted landlord, now deceased? No effort required?

  “Perhaps the bastard also fancied waiters!” Macer sounded bluff, but was obviously less confident now. I didn’t mention that Nipius and Natalis had confirmed Thales had assaulted them; I thought they would have told me about any history of serving boys actually disappearing.

  Instead, Macer dwelt on what might have happened here. “This was all done at the same time, if you ask me. Horrible to think about. Must have been some night. Bloody massacre of six people, then endless torchlit digging while they concealed the remains.”

  “Old Thales can’t have done it alone. He must have had helpers,” I said. “Multiple conspirators and aggressors. One man could never have killed so many, let alone buried them all—and so tidily, as you pointed out. This was no hurried, chaotic dump. It must have taken a lot of time, all done before the bar opened as usual next morning.”

  “Did it? Did it reopen as usual?”

  “So the waiters say.”

  Macer quizzed me sharply about that. I told him what I learned from Nipius and Natalis about Rufia’s disappearance. I decided not to mention the two Dardanian prostitutes, let alone that third woman I had yet to find. Artemisia and Orchivia were not in Rome when the crime happened, and whatever Menendra’s role was, I wanted to investigate myself.

  The troops were making acquaintance with the Dardanians anyway. Artemisia and Orchivia had joined a group of sightseers congregating outside in the street. The women were soon offering their services to the vigiles, who, according to their custom, did not rebuff the
m.

  Purists may think investigating officers and their witnesses ought to remain segregated. The Third and Fourth Cohorts were neither of them pure.

  XVIII

  Morellus and Macer pretended they were above such behavior even if, in the spirit of good community relations, free tricks were offered. Macer instructed his lads to scarper, which the lads took to mean go and get their oats somewhere else, not here under a plebeian aedile’s nose. Macer must have decided telling them not to fraternize at all would be a waste of time.

  Surprisingly to a cynic like me, it was made plain that the Dardanian dream girls would not be allowed to bring clients into the Hesperides, which was a crime scene. They grumbled loudly, then simply took the men down to the Romulus, “for a quick drink.” Perhaps they even did have a drink prior to whatever else happened. There were so many troops they must have formed a queue. Flagons would undoubtedly be ordered meanwhile. Any landlord would ensure that. One bar’s tragedy was another’s boost in trade.

  Left behind, four of us stood in the newly peaceful courtyard, looking down at the burials. Morellus and Macer favored Tiberius with their professional views; I was allowed to listen. I balked privately, but tolerated their attitude. For one thing, we might need their cooperation later. For another, Macer could always claim this was his crime scene, sealing it and making life impossible for Faustus as the contractor. Faustus made no secret of his aims: to obtain any new evidence in one go, have the skeletons removed tonight, then retake possession of the site so he could finish the refit and be paid. I was marrying a true plebeian.

  *

  The bodies had been buried around the edge of the yard. A good two feet of spoil was packed on top of them; these graves were not shallow. The victims’ heads abutted boundary walls; their feet came forward into open ground. Three were positioned on one side, Rufia and one more were at the far end, the last was on his own opposite the three others. He might have been fitted in alongside Rufia, but there was a gate to the outside alley. It must always have existed so its rutted pathway posed a discovery risk.

  “Can you tell what kind of fight happened here?” I asked.

  “Not a clue.” Macer, a natural misery, enjoyed saying no.

  Morellus was slightly more helpful. “Number five has a little dent in his skull, though not enough to have killed him. Number two had his neck broken.” He showed us.

  There were no defensive cut marks and, except for the one possible neck injury, no bones had been broken perimortem. We found no tips of knives or spears among the bones or left behind, stuck in them. Rufia might have been strangled (clearly that was the method the two vigiles would use on a woman they wanted to silence forever), but without her head no one could tell. Poisoning, drowning, suffocation would none of them show up.

  We still had not found a skull for Rufia, though we had looked carefully. All the rest, who we agreed looked like male skeletons, had their heads still attached to their spines. Only number five, with his dent, had any sign of a head wound. The only disarticulated bone was the lower leg with the cut marks.

  “If it was his arm you would think,” Morellus pontificated, “he had a knife, so somebody hacked off his limb to stop him using it.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to grab him and take the knife away?” I asked. “Haven’t we agreed there must have been several people involved in the killing?”

  Morellus spat, but that was just because I was a woman arguing. He liked to spit. It was his way of expressing a repulsive personality. “You’ve never seen a really vicious fight, girl.” I had, but forbore to argue.

  “What happened to Rufia’s head—and why?” demanded Faustus. “My men were thorough when digging. If there was a skull, we’d have found it.”

  “No, the men never missed it,” agreed Macer. “The barmaid’s bonce absolutely isn’t here.”

  “So why is she different?” I asked. “If by your verdict all these people died at the same time?”

  “Same incident. Has to be.” Morellus was definite, defending his theory. “Look how they are all put in the ground—Rufia and the man beside her spaced exactly like the trio over there. All the same depth. All placed exactly the same. All the bones have weathered equally, come to that.”

  “Why then would someone have taken her head away?”

  “In case the bodies were dug up too soon and she was recognized?” suggested Morellus.

  “More likely nabbed as a trophy,” Macer argued.

  Even Morellus assumed a pained expression, thinking his colleague an amateur. “Well, son. Some perpetrators do take trophies. Your normal killer wants a piece of jewelry or a lock of hair to remind him of his exciting experience. Those things can be hidden in his armpurse, but a whole head can cause him a problem. You don’t look too good, walking away down the street with someone’s head under your arm. Well,” he finished disparagingly, “that’s how our lot do it on the Aventine. Your villains may have a different system in the Viminal.”

  People who lived on the other Seven Hills regarded the Aventine as foreign; for Morellus, born and bred there, ours was a sophisticated haven; other hills were alien places. Their occupants all had unspeakable characteristics, with no rule of law applying to their unregulated streets.

  “Morellus, you ever-comical swine,” I chastised him, bantering as we generally did. “You speak as if mass killers are a professional group, with traditions, apprenticeships, annual guild dinners. And no doubt a funeral club. How handy for when they have fatal fights in dodgy bars!”

  “Whatever went down here,” Macer of the Third carried on conversing with his colleague in what he perceived as a fair-minded way, which meant ignoring me, “after the fracas ended, with one lot all lying quietly dead, someone rapidly got organized. Someone hoofed off for spades. Maybe there was building work nearby so they could nick tools, but they probably put them back afterward or a big theft would have been reported later. Questions would be asked.” I noticed Faustus huff quietly, as if in his experience the vigiles never took much interest in thefts of building tools. “While the corpses cooled, a group of people methodically made graves. They dropped in the bodies. They cleaned up. They flattened down the earth. They rearranged the tables and seats to look like normal.”

  “They wiped down the tables and patted the dog,” I added satirically.

  “I bet they unsealed an amphora and had a bloody big drink!” scoffed Morellus.

  “Of course the killings may have been planned,” Faustus brooded. “Some old quarrel. Weapons and burial tools may have been collected earlier.”

  “Yet nobody talks about a feud like that existing,” I reminded him. “The only rumor says the landlord murdered Rufia. It sounds like a domestic. All too usual. Five men must also have disappeared the same night, but when this rumor comes up, who mentions them?”

  “Out-of-towners,” Morellus answered at once. “Nobody cares.”

  Macer agreed. “Grockles.” It was a term my father used for visitors to Rome who came for business or pleasure, gaping at sights and having their travel bags stolen.

  “Easy pickings,” I conceded. “You shout ‘Look at that!’ then pick up their luggage while their heads are meekly turning. Alternatively, you lure them into a bent dice game or fleece them at Find the Nymph under the Cup. Fair enough—but Morellus, Macer, nobody needs to murder them.”

  “And the barmaid serving them,” Faustus backed me up.

  “So did Rufia get in the way?” I pondered. “Had these five men given her a big tip, so she liked them, then she objected to them being set upon and got bludgeoned herself for her pains?”

  “Had her head cut off for interfering?” Faustus mused.

  “A woman barging into men’s business,” I agreed sourly. I had seen that a few times. “She received double punishment.”

  “We don’t know that, love … So, officers,” Faustus asked slowly, “when you look at these bones, nothing tells you how the victims were killed?”

  Of
course I had asked that at the start, but those bastards Macer and Morellus took him more seriously. They let him see they thought he was being obsessive, however. “Very careful garrotting could leave no signs,” said Macer, now playing the silly ass.

  “Or extremely neat throat-cutting,” added Morellus. This disreputable pair had by now mastered working as a tight team. Either alone would have been a trial to a curious aedile; together they were a boot-faced, two-man pack. Their verdict was deemed to be expert, its unhelpfulness was final. According to them nobody could get any further with this.

  From experience, I felt that if we mulled over it until another day dawned, new ideas might come.

  All of us were tired, depressed and aware that there was very little to steer us toward what really happened here, let alone who might be pursued for it. The two vigiles officers lost interest. They looked at one another. Each gave the other a slight nod, some well-established private code. Morellus, since he knew us, made it official. He announced that Faustus and I were the best people to investigate.

  “Let us know.”

  “Keep in touch.”

  The two useless brutes went off, almost arm in arm, heading to join their men for refreshments down at the Romulus.

  We made no move to follow them.

  XIX

  At last we could mull this over together in private.

  Tiberius and I were silent for a time. He and I never needed to be constantly in conversation. One of the first things I ever heard about him was that he was a listener, a man who made up his mind before pronouncing. This is rare. Most give a rash opinion before they hear the full facts. Usually they get it wrong.